They served first for a cold course white sucking-pig with horse-radish cream, then a rich and very hot cabbage soup with pork on it, with boiled buckwheat, from which rose a column of steam.  The doctor went on talking, and I was soon convinced that he was a weak, unfortunate man, disorderly in external life.  Three glasses of vodka made him drunk; he grew unnaturally lively, ate a great deal, kept clearing his throat and smacking his lips, and already addressed me in Italian, “Eccellenza.”  Looking naively at me as though he were convinced that I was very glad to see and hear him, he informed me that he had long been separated from his wife and gave her three-quarters of his salary; that she lived in the town with his children, a boy and a girl, whom he adored; that he loved another woman, a widow, well educated, with an estate in the country, but was rarely able to see her, as he was busy with his work from morning till night and had not a free moment.

“The whole day long, first at the hospital, then on my rounds,” he told us; “and I assure you, Eccellenza, I have not time to read a book, let alone going to see the woman I love.  I’ve read nothing for ten years!  For ten years, Eccellenza.  As for the financial side of the question, ask Ivan Ivanitch:  I have often no money to buy tobacco.”

“On the other hand, you have the moral satisfaction of your work,” I said.

“What?” he asked, and he winked.  “No,” he said, “better let us drink.”

I listened to the doctor, and, after my invariable habit, tried to take his measure by my usual classification—­materialist, idealist, filthy lucre, gregarious instincts, and so on; but no classification fitted him even approximately; and strange to say, while I simply listened and looked at him, he seemed perfectly clear to me as a person, but as soon as I began trying to classify him he became an exceptionally complex, intricate, and incomprehensible character in spite of all his candour and simplicity.  “Is that man,” I asked myself, “capable of wasting other people’s money, abusing their confidence, being disposed to sponge on them?” And now this question, which had once seemed to me grave and important, struck me as crude, petty, and coarse.

Pie was served; then, I remember, with long intervals between, during which we drank home-made liquors, they gave us a stew of pigeons, some dish of giblets, roast sucking-pig, partridges, cauliflower, curd dumplings, curd cheese and milk, jelly, and finally pancakes and jam.  At first I ate with great relish, especially the cabbage soup and the buckwheat, but afterwards I munched and swallowed mechanically, smiling helplessly and unconscious of the taste of anything.  My face was burning from the hot cabbage soup and the heat of the room.  Ivan Ivanitch and Sobol, too, were crimson.

“To the health of your wife,” said Sobol.  “She likes me.  Tell her her doctor sends her his respects.”